Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 175: Walter of Coventry (attrib.), Memoriale

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Title:
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 175: Walter of Coventry (attrib.), Memoriale
Alternate Title:
Memoriale Walteri de Coventria
Language:
Latin and French, Middle (ca. 1400-1600)
Extent:
ff. 169
Dimensions:
288 Height (mm) and 192 Width (mm)
Approximate Date:
[ca. 1275 - 1299]
Table of contents:
  • Tituli cardinalium cum brevi descriptione eorum officii
  • Historia Britonum per compendium
  • Nomina regum Angliae et chronica Saxonum
  • Privilegium ecclesiae Sancti Petri Eboraci
  • Chronica regum Northumbriae et archiepiscoporum Eboracensium
  • Quaedam de conquestu Hiberniae et jure regis Angliae in Scotos
  • Prophetiae Sybillae et Merlini
  • Memoriale
Description:
CCCC MS 175 contains a copy of an historical compilation called the Memoriale commonly attributed to Walter of Coventry who was writing in the second half of the thirteenth century, the period in which this manuscript of his text was written. In addition, the first few leaves of the manuscript are taken up with a range of historical notes, extracts and genealogical tables, some relating to the archdiocese of York. The manuscript was almost certainly in the hands of the Tudor poet and antiquary John Leland (1506-1552), who thought it was in poor condition - 'Codex erat aliquot locis mancus'. The historian John Bale (1495-1563) saw the manuscript in Leland's collection, but Parker must have acquired it some time before 1572 (possibly from the Cheapside resident William Carye), since the text was used as the basis for the archbishop's Antiquitates published in that year. The manuscript was copied many time in the course of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the details it supplied about church government in Angevin England being keenly studied by church historians.
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